The next mayor of Washington, D.C. is likely to be a Marxist. In Los Angeles, the Mensheviks and Bolsheviks are battling it out for control. New York City has already fallen to a champion of Third Worldism.

And, for the first time in American history, a significant bloc of Congress will openly hate the country they represent. We aren't talking about anti-Americanism in an abstract or hyperbolic sense. The Zohran Mamdani slate that swept the Democratic Party primaries is explicit in its aim to dismantle the republic.

Members of Democratic Socialists of America want to abolish the police, prisons, borders and "seize the means of production," as the future congresswoman from the 11th District of New York, Darializa Avila Chevalier, once argued. The co-founder of a group that called for "nothing short of the total collapse" of the "American empire" with the goal to "eradicate America" and "Western civilization," Avila Chevalier doesn't deny she's a communist. And why should she?

There's a temptation to dismiss and whitewash the rise of the socialists. We shouldn't. Sure, the DSA is still constrained by the constitutional order, but they aren't constrained by Democrats.

"The roof is collapsing on the Democratic Party establishment tonight," Van Jones warned on CNN as he watched the New York primary results come in. "This is a battle between the establishment and this insurgency."

What battle?

The establishment has surrendered to the DSA's hostile takeover on every front. Establishment Democrats like Nancy Pelosi had the chance to sideline Squad members when they first appeared, yet the former Speaker eventually coddled them, perched them in important committees and appeared on magazine covers celebrating their ascendency.

If Democrats were unwilling to sideline illiberal bigots like Reps. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) and Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) back then, what makes anyone think they'll stand up to the socialists now?

Major Democrats virtually tripped over themselves to endorse Nazi SS tattoo man Graham Platner in Maine, who is a Mamdanite in all ways save the flannel shirt.

"One of the things that makes the Democratic Party great is it's a big tent party," Corey Booker said of socialists who explicitly demand the overturn of Article I of the Constitution. "We need to stay that way."

Democratic voters, says Connecticut Sen. Chris Murphy, "choose candidates, not party leaders. And party leaders need to listen to what voters are telling us, and right now they are demanding our party be bolder."

One supposes that if a person already supports abolishing the Electoral College and packing the Supreme Court, supporting the eradication of all checks and balances isn't much of a jump.

No one Democrat is stopping the DSA.

It's not implausible that many more Democrats in urban areas will lose their seats to the well-funded socialist candidates. That includes Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries. At the very least, Jeffries and others will be compelled to move even farther left to pacify the DSA and save their seats. Considering the spinelessness of the "establishment," we can expect Democrats to embrace a widening array of Marxist policy ideas.

Some analysts point out that the primary voters for the Mamdani slate were largely high-earning, young, non-native New York voters, not the working class, immigrants or rank-and-file voters. Marxists are most often over-credentialed bourgeois with savior complexes.

On the other hand, all energy on the Left is with the anti-American faction.

According to Gallup, 66% of Democrats hold a positive view of socialism. The younger you are, the more you lean toward collectivist ideas. An Axios-Generation Lab poll found 67% of college students hold a positive or neutral association with "socialism," compared to only 40% with "capitalism."

What do we expect after decades of cultural and academic attacks on free enterprise, liberty and American history?

The outlook of immigrants is not much better. According to one poll, Mamdani won 62% of foreign-born voters in his mayoral race. Another poll found that Mamdani won 81% of the vote of people who were in New York City for fewer than 10 years. Mamdani won something like 90% of Muslim votes.

We can extrapolate from that race that socialists are importing Third World ideas that appeal to unassimilated newcomers. One of the most popular being Jew hatred.

There has always been radicalism on the American Left.

But Democrats didn't invite Black Panthers or Weather Underground into their party in the 1970s.

In the 2020s, though, Democrats invited communists into their tent.

Now the communists are taking over.

David Harsanyi is a senior writer at the Washington Examiner. Harsanyi is a nationally syndicated columnist and author of five books — the most recent, "How To Kill a Republic," available now. His work has appeared in National Review, the Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, Reason, New York Post and numerous other publications. Follow him on X @davidharsanyi.

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